Cowboys 08 - Luke

by Leigh Greenwood

  "Take the top off and hand it to me while I hold her up," Luke said.

  During this, Otto stumbled into the tent. He had managed to put on his shirt, but he didn't look nearly as upset as Hans. Luke suspected him of being far more loyal to his own safety than his employer's.

  "Is she hurt?" he asked.

  "She fainted," Hans explained. "Luke is going to revive her with smelling salts."

  "I can see that," Otto snapped.

  Luke waved the smelling salts beneath Elvira's nose. It took a moment before she revived with a violent jerk.

  "Thank goodness," Valeria said.

  "W-what happened?" Elvira asked.

  "You fainted," Luke said.

  "It's understandable," Hans said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, looking more nervous and upset than usual. "It's like the civil war all over again."

  His words caused everyone to fall silent.

  "It's your fault," Hans said, surprising Luke by his anger. "You weren't here when the princess needed you."

  "He was hunting food for our table," Otto reminded him.

  "He should have sent someone else," Hans said. "His job was to protect her highness."

  "You're right," Luke said over Valeria's protest. "It was a stupid mistake, and I'm ashamed of it. I won't leave Valeria again. I'll sleep inside the tent tonight, right there." He pointed to a spot on the floor next to Valeria's bed.

  "You'll do no such thing," Valeria said. "Elvira would

  never get a moment's rest with you-a man-inside the tent."

  Luke wasn't happy to know he'd tensed the moment he made the offer, that his body relaxed at Valeria's prompt refusal. He couldn't be sure it wasn't from disappointment rather than relief.

  "Then I'll sleep outside the door. Isn't that what your guards did in Belgravia?" He hadn't meant to be snide, just to cover his reaction to his own feelings. He had to stop letting Valeria affect him like this. It might have been a long time since he'd had a woman, but he'd never been desperate before. Finding that Elvira could sit up on her own, Luke got to his feet. "I've got to see if anybody else is hurt. Stay here until I let you know it's safe to go outside."

  "We can't stay in her highness's private tent," Hans said. "It's not proper."

  "You can go," Luke said. "Nobody's trying to shoot you or Otto."

  "How do you know?" Otto demanded.

  "I don't. But if I thought they were, I'd be tempted to throw you outside so they could have a second chance." Outside, confusion reigned. Luke heard groans, one man yelling, presumably in pain. "Anybody hit?" he asked Zeke.

  "Just a couple of the cook's helpers, but they deserved it. If I'd been here, I'd have shot them for stupidity. Instead of dropping to the ground when the attack started, they ran out into the open, directly into the field of fire. They're lucky they only got flesh wounds."

  "Are they bad?"

  "I don't know. I left the cook taking care of them."

  Luke found the cook bandaging one man's arm; a second man was chattering away in a language Luke didn't understand.

  "Do you need any medical supplies?" Luke asked.

  "In the kitchen we have accidents all the time," the cook said. "I have everything."

  "Did anybody manage to hit one of the Indians?" Luke asked Zeke.

  "I don't know. I was down at the river with the horses when they attacked. By the time I got back they had gone."

  "That seems awfully quick."

  "Maybe the drivers ran them off too soon. As soon as they heard the first shot, they were on their bellies under the wagons firing as fast as they could. If those foreign fools hadn't gotten in the way, they might have killed a couple."

  "We didn't have much chance to get any of them," one of the drivers said. "They were gone by the time I was able to work around my wagon, find my rifle, and get into position."

  "You didn't see or hear them coming."

  "I wasn't paying no attention," the driver said. "I thought you was taking care of that. I had my hands full trying to harness up these stubborn mules."

  Luke supposed the man meant to make him feel guilty for not doing his job. He did, but he didn't have time for self-recrimination now. "Where did they come from? What direction?"

  "Northwest," Zeke said. "That's what you saw?" he asked the driver.

  "Pretty much. They ran off in that direction, too."

  "Where's Hawk?" Luke asked.

  He wasn't worried that anything had happened to Hawk. The man was more Indian than white, but Luke had expected him to head into camp as soon as he heard the first shot.

  "Somewhere off to the south."

  Luke had gone northwest, so he wouldn't have seen the attackers even if he hadn't been on the other side of the river. "I shouldn't have left," he said.

  "You had to, unless you wanted us to starve," Zeke said. "I hope you got a deer."

  "It's across my saddle. I'll get Hawk to dress it out as soon as he gets back."

  If he gets back. He didn't know why that thought should bedevil him. Hawk had gone in nearly the opposite direction from the attackers. He couldn't possibly have been hurt. The orphans didn't always like to acknowledge the bond between them, but Hawk would never stay away if he thought one of them was in trouble.

  "They were Indians," one of the drivers said.

  "It looked that way," Luke said. "Do you know what kind?"

  "No. I can't tell one Indian from another. They all look the same to me."

  "You'd better not say that around Hawk," Zeke warned.

  "I don't say nothing around him," the driver said. "I like my hair where it is."

  "Hawk wouldn't scalp anybody," Luke said, disgusted anybody would think he might.

  "He'll just cut your liver out," Zeke said, then laughed. "Shut up," Luke said. "You scare them off, you find replacements."

  "Where?" Zeke said, looking around at the empty desert and hills. "There's not a living soul within fifty miles of us."

  "Except those Indians," the driver said.

  "They was Chiricahuas," a boyish driver said. He had coal-black hair and cheeks as downy as a peach.

  That didn't make sense to Luke. The Chiricahua had been banished to the San Carlos Reservation in 1876. The closest part of that reservation was more than a hundred miles away. A few renegade braves had terrorized the area under Geronimo, but they'd been sent to Florida in 1886. There wouldn't be enough fugitives in the area to mount such an attack.

  "Are you sure?" Luke asked.

  "I used to live in Douglas," the young driver said. "I saw them Indians all the time. He was a Chiricahua."

  "Have you seen Hawk?" Luke asked.

  "I ain't seen him since he went out of here heading south," the boy said, returning to the job of harnessing his team of four mules. "That was over an hour ago."

  Luke scanned the hills and desert to the south, but he didn't see any sign of Hawk.

  "There he is," one of the drivers called.

  "Where?" Luke asked.

  "Over there, where those Indians disappeared."

  It took Luke a moment before he could distinguish Hawk from several blooming yucca plants. A surprisingly strong feeling of relief swept over him. He'd hate to be the one to write Isabelle that Hawk had died because he hadn't attended to his responsibilities. Luke couldn't forget the passionate warmth Isabelle showered on her adopted family. He had stayed away because he didn't know how to return it. It would be easier if they just forgot about him.

  Zeke pointed out the obvious. "Hawk's leading a horse with a body thrown across the saddle."

  Hawk had apparently heard the attack, ridden to intercept the attackers, and killed one of them before they got away.

  "We might as well get ready to pull out," Luke said to the drivers. "Everybody get your teams hitched up. Lend me a hand with this deer," he said to Zeke.

  Luke figured it was probably safe for Valeria to come out of her tent, but he wanted to hear what Hawk had found out first.

  "You thin
k this attack has to do with her?" Zeke asked, nodding his head in the direction of Valeria's tent.

  "I don't know," Luke replied. "They didn't appear to be looking for her tent."

  "They couldn't have missed it. It's big enough for a king "

  "She's a king's daughter," Luke pointed out. "A fact I hope you remember."

  "I will. Now stop sticking your nose in my business and help with this deer."

  They had the deer skinned and half the meat butchered, wrapped, and out of the heat by the time Hawk rode up. "Where did they go?" Luke asked.

  "Toward the mountains," Hawk answered as he slid from the saddle.

  "A driver said they were Chiricahuas," Luke said. "This one is a white man." Hawk grabbed the dead man by the hair and lifted his head until Luke could see his face. "White man," Hawk said.

  The man had dressed himself as an Indian, but there wasn't enough makeup in the world to make him took like an Indian.

  "I know him," one of the drivers said. "He goes by the name of Sam Lewis."

  "Where did you meet him?" Luke asked.

  "When I was doing some freighting over near Benson. They threw him out of one of the saloons for coming on too hard with one of the girls. He swore he'd come back and kill 'em all."

  "Well, now you can go over to Benson and tell them they're safe," a fellow driver said.

  "Not me. I don't want nobody thinking I'm a friend to that coyote."

  "The one I saw was a Chiricahua," the young driver said. "I couldn't mistake something like that."

  It didn't make any sense to Luke. A group of a halfdozen men, at least one real Indian and at least one fake, attacks the camp, doesn't take anything, doesn't kill anybody, and breaks and runs after less than a minute.

  "Does anyone have an idea what they could have been after?" Luke asked the gathered drivers.

  "They didn't try to get anything," one said. "They just fired off a lot of shots and rode off again."

  "Maybe they were after the horses," another volunteered. "When they didn't see them, they rode off."

  "We have twenty-four mules worth a fortune," Luke pointed out. "Why didn't they take those?"

  "We all had our teams near our wagons," a driver said. "They couldn't have gotten the mules without getting shot."

  "Then why didn't they come earlier when the mules and horses were still staked out?" Luke asked. "That's what Indians usually do.

  Kill any guard and make off with the livestock before anybody knows what's happening."

  No one had an answer.

  "Why should this man be dressed up like an Indian?" one driver asked.

  "So the raid would be blamed on Indians," Hawk said. "But they didn't take anything. Why get yourself in trouble and not take anything?"

  Which was exactly the question Luke wanted answered.

  "Who is that man?"

  Luke hadn't heard Valeria approach. The men stood back to allow her to step forward.

  "I told you to stay in your tent," he said. She looked composed, but he could tell from the continual movement of her eyes, the incident had upset her a great deal. "I waited, but you never came back."

  "I wanted to find out what Hawk had discovered." "If you had told me, I wouldn't have worried." "Worried about what?"

  "About the men I heard moaning," she said. "I was on my way to see if I could help, but Hans told me the chef had already taken care of them."

  "What could you do?" It never occurred to him that she would think of anyone but herself.

  "Elvira and I worked in the hospital during the war." That surprised him even more.

  "I'll remember that next time."

  "Do you think there'll be a next time?"

  He didn't know how much of the truth he wanted her to know. "You never can tell. It's always best to be prepared."

  She looked at the man on the horse.

  "He's an Indian," she said. That appeared to relieve her mind.

  "No. A white man dressed up to look like an Indian." The worry returned. "Why would he do that?" "That's what we're trying to figure out. Does it make any sense to you?"

  "No."

  "I told you we would be in danger," Hans said. He'd forced his way into the bystanders, followed by Otto. Luke groaned inwardly. All he needed now was Elvira, and the group would be complete.

  "There's always danger when you travel through open country," Luke said. "You've got more wealth here than most men can dream of. That's why I made sure all the drivers are expert gunmen."

  "Is that why the attackers left so quickly?" Valeria asked.

  "I hope so." He felt certain the attack had something to do with Valeria, but he was at a loss to say how. "We can't stand 'round talking. Tell your cook to get breakfast ready."

  "But we've been attacked," Hans said.

  "All the more reason to leave," Luke said. "If they come again, they'll have to look for us. You can be sure I won't be out hunting."

  "Did you find some meat?" Otto asked. "A deer."

  "I love a venison roast. I'll talk to the chef right away." The fool was more concerned about his appetite than his safety.

  "It won't last long with twenty people to feed," Zeke said.

  "That's our deer," Otto said, apparently never considering the possibility Luke would share the meat with the drivers.

  "Any meat I kill belongs to everybody," Luke said.

  "There'll be no more cooking three times what you can eat. Nor," he said before Otto could protest, "will I allow you to eat three times as much at a sitting as one of my drivers."

  "You can't give us orders." Otto seemed more shocked than fearful of going hungry.

  "If you want more to eat, go kill it yourself." "I can't ride."

  It was Luke's turn to be surprised. "Then you'd better trim your appetite." Otto made a sputtering noise.

  "We'll all have to make changes in the way we do things," Valeria said. "It really doesn't make sense to serve more food than we can eat."

  "But I can eat my share," Otto protested.

  "Maybe you shouldn't," Hans said. "A slimming diet would prolong the life of your coat buttons."

  Luke had no intention of standing around while these men took potshots at each other. "Hawk, get some of the drivers to help you bury that man. Zeke and I will finish dressing the meat."

  Valeria followed him.

  "You don't want to watch," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "It's not a sight suitable for a woman of your type." "And what is my type?"

  He refused to let her put him on the spot.

  "I'm certain you've never had to dress the meat you ate."

  She looked at the deer. "Is that the kind of food I'll be expected to eat at Rudolf's ranch?"

  "Maybe."

  "Then I'll watch. I expect I'll have to learn to butcher, too."

  Luke studied her expression for a moment, trying to determine if she was serious. He hoped she wasn't. She was a spoiled, silly woman, and no man in his right mind would consider having anything to do with her, even temporarily, even if it was only physical.

  But then women like her didn't have merely physical relationships. Nor were they temporary. They had only marriages governed by contracts. It would be like becoming part of a government. No emotion involved. None desired. Arrange the politics and the money, and the people fell into line. He wasn't the least bit sentimental, but he was glad such an inhumane system was being pushed into oblivion.

  Her wanting to change was a good sign, but he wasn't sure about her sudden determination to learn all she could about living in Arizona. He didn't want her to be sincere. He didn't want a reason to admire her. That could be

  more dangerous than being physically attracted to her. He hadn't wanted to admire Isabelle when she adopted him and his brother, when she gave them unconditional love whether they wanted it or not, when she enfolded them into a family that was warm and comforting despite the years of hurt and anger each carried with him. He hadn't wanted to admire Jake when
he taught them to do an honest day's work, when he tried to instill in them a sense of right and wrong, when he gave them understanding without demanding less from them.

  Yet his memory of his adoptive parents remained as strong and clear as the day he rode away from their ranch. Nor could he forget their teachings, the memories of a life he'd enjoyed for five years. That's what came with respect and admiration. No matter what he did, where he went, they'd be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

  He didn't want that to happen with Valeria. He might start thinking of her all the time.

  Valeria couldn't sleep. The attack had stunned, frightened, and confused her. She hadn't really believed anybody wanted to kill her. She couldn't think of any reason why someone should. She didn't have any power, and her uncle and future husband would control her money.

  Rebellions and changes of government in her country had always been understandable. Battles took place on neatly confined battlefields. The men of her family died in combat or in their beds. No attempt had ever been made to harm the women and children. There was a much greater chance she'd die in childbirth than at the hands of an assassin.

  But if she was to believe Luke and Hans, she was the reason for the attack. She didn't know the man dressed up like an Indian, had no reason to feel sympathetic, but no one had ever died because of her. It made her feel guilty, as though it was her fault. For the first time she felt the weight of her heritage, of being able to cause men to die. She didn't like it. She wanted to hide, to do anything she could to keep from feeling guilty for that man's death.